Sequin is the screen name for the questing 16-year-old at the slowly awakening heart of
Sequin in a Blue Room, a 2019 Australian film only now reaching the UK.
Sequin is the screen name for the questing 16-year-old at the slowly awakening heart of
Sequin in a Blue Room, a 2019 Australian film only now reaching the UK. The graduation project of its New Zealand-born director and co-writer Samuel Van Grinsven, the 80-minute movie charts a mostly compelling path from multiply meaningless gay hook-ups through to something at least resembling a connection, if the image of shared popcorn at the end offers any indication of happier times ahead.
Sequin in a Blue Room: LGBTQ drama casts an otherworldly spell
Samuel van Grinsven’s Australian coming-of-age story is never judgmental
Film Title: Sequin in a Blue Room
Director: Conor Leach, Simon Croker, Jeremy Lindsay Taylor, Anthony Brandon Wong
Starring: Conor Leach, Simon Croker, Jeremy Lindsay Taylor, Anthony Brandon Wong
Genre: Drama
Mirroring Gregg Araki’s boldly queer 1992 classic The Living End, this stylish debut feature opens with a declarative title card: “A homosexual film by Samuel van Grinsven”.
A deftly constructed coming-of-age story that plays like a thriller, Sequin in a Blue Room concerns a 16-year-old schoolboy who, using the glittery mononym of the title, sleepwalks through school lessons, oblivious to teachers, peers and his romantic admirer, Tommy (Simon Croker).